


My Friends Call Me

by TheDarkRat



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: F/F, F/M, May Parker is Bisexual, May is just as much as a genius as the rest of the family, i'm ignoring a lot of canon, using only Spider-Verse as canon, women in STEM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24125317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkRat/pseuds/TheDarkRat
Summary: This in response to the one scene in Into The Spiderverse where May Parker says, "Oh. It's Liv." Like it's not big deal.I wrote this instead of sleeping because anxiety makes my insomnia worse.(Also uploading via mobile. If something looks wonky, let me know.)
Relationships: May Parker/Ben Walker, Olivia Octavius/May Parker (Spider-Man)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 60





	My Friends Call Me

It started out as comradry. Academia was hard enough, but STEM was brutal if you had two X chromosomes. 

They weren't in the same fields, May in biological engineering and Liv in theoretical quantum physics; but they were in the same building. They would meet for coffee and to bitch about their male colleges. 

May already had one doctorate under her belt, inbetween teaching, she was going for another. (Most of her work would be built upon and then overshadowed by her younger brother. No one would remember that May Parker was the first to work on spiders and their webs.) 

Liv was 20 years her junior. May could start counting grey hairs. But they got along. Academia is rough for a woman without support. So they supported each other. With cheerleading, with food, with hand holding, hugging, then on one late night, waiting on data to compile, kissing. May felt she was both robbing the cradle and felt years younger herself. 

When May defended her second doctoral thesis, Liv was there with cheesecake and booze. When Liv's first experiment worked, May was there with champagne and old New Years noisemakers. There was enthusiastic kissing and lovemaking on both occasions. 

When May's younger brother graduated and followed his older sister's footsteps, Liv brought a "It's A Boy" balloon. (Later this will be remembered as accidentally prophetic.)

When Liv's physics stalled out due to needing to catch up with technology, May suggested mechanical engineering. Liv took to it like a duck to water. 

It was this, the mechanical engineering, that proved to be the first step onto a path May couldn't...wouldn't follow. 

Because when you can make machines and gizmos that can do anything, there are always shady people who will pay you anything for them. And Liv...physics was her first love. Money could fund a lot of tech, could buy new equipment, secure locations abroad with better atmospheric environments. So. Liv built. 

May cautioned against a few contracts, and Liv listened. But there were always more. And Liv's theories about quantum planes and wormholes needed proving. 

May's baby brother was also doing shady science with shady companies. May had been there for the wedding. And had gotten the picture postcard of her nephew. Little Peter Parker. He was adorable. But. He was also 3 states away. 

Liv and May drifted slowly apart. Liv's work took her away from campus for months at a time. And May, though faithful, was lonely. Benjamin Walker was an ordinary man with an ordinary, blue-collar job in construction. He was a foreman for a welding outfit. They met by chance at the dry cleaners. 

Liv had just returned from a trip that revolutionized her physics career. She had scored a big contract for some newly designed weapons. It would fund two new machines for her new lab. She was sketching out a bomb when May visited her lab. 

May saw the blueprints. And she couldn't. She knew Liv would always put her work first - that was never an issue. But making things to harm? Making things and then not caring who you sold them to or what they might use them for? That was crossing a line. 

When the first super villain rampaged through Manhattan with one of Liv's creations, May had had enough. 

They parted peacefully, the split would have happened anyway, they both reasoned. It was only a brief (10 years) time. They would all move on. 

Ben and May were married. May's baby brother and wife died. May became the guardian to a tiny, 3-year-old genius named Peter. May and Ben moved to Queens, to her brother's house so not to upset Peter with more change. 

She left Academia because she has a child to raise. But she kept in touch. She would occassionally send Liv an email asking about her research and not asking about the latest villain could fly around the city on a hoverboard. 

Peter grew up. As children do. May homeschooled him for his early years - he was much too smart for grade school. He was pushing it for high school too. But he needed the social bonding. So he went to high school. 

Ben died. A mugger. Robbery gone bad. May goes by her maiden name again. Peter takes Ben as his middle name. They grieve. 

Peter comes out as Spiderman. And May...wonders if this is her fault. The web-shooters are based on work she did, that her brother did, that finally her genius nephew perfected into a tool worth using. 

May watches fight after fight on the television, commentary by the local news crews. May watches as Green Goblin's newest toy is a Double O special, one of Liv's.

May braces herself as much as she can. Vigilante life is short and brutal. Peter has the odds stacked against him. But, oh, she couldn't be more proud of him. Benjamin Walker had been a union representative for those steel workers. He knew power came with responsibility for those under you, those who needed you. You spoke for those who couldn't speak. And Peter...Peter made that his life's work. 

Peter Parker dies. It's violent and brutal. May is the one who identifies the body at the morgue. MJ was too distraught. May couldn't blame her. Widowhood is awful enough without it being sudden and vicious. May would know. 

May knows something is happening. Her nephew wouldn't have died for nothing. And there is work yet to be done. 

So when Penny, Peter Porker, and Noir Peter show up at her door, she takes it in stride. The stories they tell are all so similar that May can feel her heart constrict for them. And when they describe the wormholes? Well. A quick search brings up that Liv is working for Alchemx now. A company run by Kingpin. A company who pays large amounts of cash and skips out on regulations and oversight. 

May knows that Liv's research has finally been successfully proven. And this is probably what her Peter died for. 

When another set of Spiderfolk show up at her door, she is momentarily speechless. That's her Peter's face, older to be sure, but him nonetheless. His expression mirrors her own and she knows that they are both looking at someone they outlived. 

Miles is from Brooklyn. This dimension, this universe. He was there. He saw it. And May is furious for this young man, so young, and traumatized. But she sees the same steel backbone that Peter forged. The same genius reflected in his eyes. Miles lacks confidence and experience. Of course he does. He's a child.

She watches as he runs away, invisible and hurt, from the others. She isn't surprised either that he returns. Or that the doorbell rings. Because Liv has known where she lived for years now. They send each other Christmas cards. Because May can see Liv's scientific fingerprint on all of this. Because despite the years past and paths not taken, they have always been kind to one another. Women in STEM have to support each other. 

So when the doorbell rings, May knows it for the courtesy it is. "It's Liv," she says even as she hefts the baseball bat. 

The next afternoon, when there are no less than seven plastic tarps covering various holes in her house, Miles Morales returns. He relays the events of the previous night, of the night he met her Peter, and of his plans now.

Again she sees Peter in him, shining brightly, burning hot. Responsibility and power. May gives him a standing invitation for tea every fortnight. 

She knows Liv is gone now. Swallowed up by her life's work - more literal than they'd expected. But Liv's inventions are still around. And so are every person's just like her. There will always be more. 

"Come here, Miles. Let me show you how to repair those shooters." 


End file.
